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June 15, 2010 Newsletter
Garden "Wrap-up." Plus: More on the US-Israel-Gaza Flotilla Dog and Pony Show, and More on the BP "Polooza"
If Billy Mays was alive and/or "the Sham-Wow guy" was out of jail, then I could sell them another one of my ideas for protecting garden veggies from grasshoppers or birds or other funny looking bugs. First it was the "Plain of Jars." Then the "Greenhouse in a Bag," and now: the Garden Wrap-Up! I'd patent the ideas, but I may not have the money to try to get these things patented (for one thing, I'd have to hire a patent lawyer), and I don't have the time to do a patent search if I do not hire a lawyer. And besides, I am sure I am not the first one to think of this idea. It just so happens, however, that I had the materials to do this, and I did something similar a couple of years ago to another set of veggies.
So what is the "Garden Wrap-Up?" Taking a section of plastic covering that wrapped up a new mattress--one of two we got the kids a few years ago when their old mattresses wore out--and taking a circular wire trellace used for growing cucumbers or butternut squash, where the vines attach to in order to facilitate growing--wrap the rather large sheet around the trellace. If the sheet is large in width but not in length, simply wrap the sheet around the trellace and clamp shut around with clothes pins or paper clamps, and form a "cone shape" at the top and close that up with a twist tie. However, if the sheet is large length and height, wrap it around the trellace at the top of the trellace and enclose the open ends with clothes pins. Yet, why in the world would you wrap your cucumbers or squash or anything in plastic? Bugs such as grasshoppers can still get in since you can't completely keep out these bugs, such as when you water the plants; then the enclosure must be opened.
Here's why: birds. Specifically, Grossbeaks, those pretty black and yellow-spotted critters we had seen getting out of the cucmbers and tearing up the stems in the developing plants, as well as Jays, which are usually a culprit at something. They have a solution for Jays, I imagine, in Kansas...you know, Jayhawks, and I don't mean football players! But this is west Texas, and I don't think the redwinged hawks we have out here eat jays. Too busy eating mice. It was getting so every cucumber had at least one torn stem so that I had to do something about or else the boatload of pickles I expected to can would be reudced to just cucumbers for salad. I haven't started pickling cucumbers yet, but I've been saving for about a year left over pickle juice from various organically grown pickle producers that also use freshly grown dill and other herbs. Cascadian Farms brand, if you can get it, is great. Cascadian Farms uses garlic pieces in their processes. The juice from Cascadian Farms jars is tasty enough to drink right out of the jar. Some kosher company named "Boobies" is good too but a bit on the strong side. Clausens, which can be gotten at WalMart, is part organic and is the only decent brand we can get around here at this point. I do NOT use Vlassic or any other "popular" brand juices. That is because I have been spoiled by eating GOOD pickles, not just the yuck the masses eat (honestly, if you think Vlassic is good you don't know what you are missing! Valssic clearly does not use the kinds of herbs these better pickles have). Pickles, in fact, is one of the few foods I am very fussy about!
Another way to keep birds out of the cucumbers is to grow the plants surrounded by chicken wire. Yet that won't keep "stink beetles" and other stem eating or leaf rotting bugs off them. "Stink bettles" (or harlequin bugs or some other name, but they look and smell like stink bugs) do the same kind of damage as birds will but more slowly, and, further, they are much harder to find amongst all the leafiness, yet they do damage cucumbers in particular, and do a lot of "mating dances" on them...when you see two stink bugs back to back on a stem, they are likely mating. Or when you see them one on top of the other. Well, it looks like they are mating!
Of course you don't have bird problems if you live in the suburbs...maybe. In the suburbs on Long Island where I grew up you had sparrows and starlings and the occasional cardinal, but that was it, plus the occasional squirrel messing around. Unless you actually see birds messing up your plants, I do not recommend using plastic around the plants because you do not want to possibly impede their growth. The same can be said for using jars to cover young plants that could be attacked by birds or grasshoppers: on a hot day, some young plants can burn up since glass absorbs heat rapidly and can burn leaves. A few of our okra and corn plants have died because of jar use. Since we have had rain, the jars have now been removed.
Okra? Yes, that's right. You do not need to be in a hot, moist climate to grow okra--but hot, moist climates such as can be found in "gumbo country" helps. We have gorwn okra here in the mountains for about five years now, because while we don't get the rain Louisiana gets we do get the heat. I'd say you can grow it anywhere along the southern border, wet or dry, as long as you water it well enough. The problem is you will not get the production in a drier climate that you would get in a wetter one. In far west Texas, okra should be planted in May when it starts getting hot, and you can keep it going until the first frost which around here is usually in mid-October. I fry okra instead of making gumbo.
And now for the dog and pony show. Taking up where we left off last post about how Israel created Hamas which is now running Gaza which is why Israel put it under blockade which is why that Gaza Flotilla was trying to break the blockade which was why Israel murdered nine individuals including a Turkish-American from Boston which was why various individuals are reminding folks that Israel created Hamas in the first place...Well, it turns out that Israel has suddenly come out with a lot of admissions one must wonder they would have come out with had this PR disaster they cursed themselves with (I put it that way to remind any Christian Zionists reading this that I don't have to curse Israel (see Genesis 12:3)--they do that quite nicely themselves, they don't need me to do it for them...) not been carried out. Benny the Yahoo finally admitted to the whole world that Johathan Pollard really was an Israeli spy in the US but that he was also just plain sanctioned by the Israeli government and was not the "rogue agent" former Ambassador to the USA Oren claimed Pollard was. Say what? The former Israeli Ambassador to the US has claimed while in the US that Pollard was NOT sanctioned by the Israeli government, but was a rogue Mossad agent-- according to this fine Gordon Duff piece on Veterans Today. And, BTW, if Haaretz is too Labor Zionist for you, Benny boy repeats that claim in the Jerusalem Post. Here is why this is all just another part of the US-Israel-Hamas "dog and pony show": If the Israeli govt. "didn't sanction" these acts reported in this piece, that makes them okay??? That makes Israel's alleged involvment in 9-11--Urban Moving system's Mossad operatives cheering across the river from the burning WTC; the case reported by FOX News' Carl Cameron of the Mossad "Israeli Art Students" spying in the US for Israel, and the fact that Israel knew what was going to happen, which was why they told their employees in the WTC NOT to go to work on the morning of 9-11-- okay?? That makes Israel's attempt to sink the USS Liberty okay?? Because they were "rogue ops"? Now let me get this straight: Israel pretty much controls US foreign policy in the Middle East, but Israel can't even control its own Mossad agents??? If you expect me to believe that, Mr. Oren, I have a bridge crossing the East River I'd like to sell you...yet, seeing as how you don't need a bridge to cross the Jordan River anymore, seeing as how Israel is getting less and less rain every year, which is why they want to take the Litani River from Lebanon...Now, I ask you...just Who is cursing Israel? Because, honey, I have nothing to do with making the weather!
This is what Oren claimed, to quote from the Duff piece: "...In this instance, secrets meant to defend NATO from Soviet invasion were useful to Israel who traded them in order to get Jews released from Russia and allowed to immigrate to Israel. Israel contended that it was their inherent right to that information because they had a vital need for it. In that information, along with locations of all vital NATO nuclear facilities, were the names of all CIA operatives working behind the Iron Curtain and details on their contacts. After this information went to Israel, then to Russia, all involved, CIA handlers, agents and their families were murdered, the biggest intelligence disaster in American history...." Keep in mind, though, the motto of the Mossad: "By deception, thou shalt do war." Sorry, but to me the entire Mossad is a "rogue op"! (To show how much of a rogue op it is, Mike Rivero proves he's good for something.) Just like the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine," which did the hijacking of a plane in Tripoli that wound up in Entebbe, Uganda, which precipitated the now famous "Raid on Entebbe" by the IDF--was a rogue op, and just like Hamas is also a "rogue op." And let's not forget the ever popular CIA, the same CIA that helped create al-Qaida using Pakistan's ISI as a proxy...so says former CIA agent George Crile in "Charlie Wilson's War." So, put all these "rogue ops" together and what do you get? One helluva "dog and pony show."
On to "Gulf-a-Poloooza": any BS regarding how the coming huuricane season in the Gulf will cause oil to mix with water as part of the weather cycle or that rain falling on the Gulf Coast has oil mixed in with it is just that: BS. I'm no scientist but even I know that oil and water do not mix. But just to get "expert" verification that oil and water don't mix, I checked it out with my son the Sea Aggie graduate, who is now working for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and he verified my take that indeed, oil and water do not mix. "Oil is not very hydrophilic," is his exact phrase. For those who don't know what "hydrophilic" means (or, if you're a Longhorn--just kidding!), it means "having an affinity for water" or, in English, easily mixing with water. Such that, since rain does indeed contain water, what are the chances that oil would mix with that water in rain? Well, according to Four Winds.com, some folks have claimed to have been rained on, and, on their unbrellas, is an oil sheen! Other "there-is-oil-in-the-rain" stories have appeared elsewhere. These stories have turned out to be a hoax, however, perpetrated by the ever popular disinfo agent, one "Sorcha Faal". Yet the FourWinds site keeps on putting "Faal's" nonsense up on their site. Right alongside Benjamin Fulford. Much more likely to be the truth of the matter is presented in this video from a woman, the wife of a shrimper, who was allowed by BP to see exactly what was going on and to talk to BP officials. This video is now all over the Internet; I've seen it in dozens of places. Might as well make my site just another place for it to be viral. Plus, the Christian Science Monitor has a story about how local officials are willing to risk jail to get the beaches cleaned up though BP has ordered them not to, and this piece about how BP, well known to be firing clean up workers who wear respirators, is also setting up "company towns" for these workers...the original source, though, World Socialist Web Site, is suspect. Yet this might make sense if BP is trying to keep embarrassing news of this disaster regarding dead wildlife and sick workers out of the view of the media. I can just see M. Night Shamalyan making a movie about this: "The Gulf of Wrath." But, who knows? Hal Lindsey, in his next fit of prophetic apoplexia, might have these workers "raptured" outta here.
